


Grotesque Grace: A Beetlejuice AU

by shaesinflames



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice: The Musical
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2020-09-24 07:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaesinflames/pseuds/shaesinflames
Summary: In this AU, specifically using the storyline and personality traits from 'Beetlejuice the Musical', Beetlejuice is the guardian angel of Lydia Deetz who he is assigned to by God, Juno, after her mother, Emily Deetz dies. The Deetz and the Maitlands personalities are reversed, the five of them being very rude, manipulative, and cynical to Beej.Warning: Charles is emotionally abusive to Lydia, Juno is physically and emotionally abusive to Beetlejuice, the Maitlands are rather conservative and may make homophobic/transphobic/racist comments.





	1. Chapter 1

Heaven is basically what you would imagine. A mansion crafted of pure white clouds, infested with angels dressed like they're about to go to a wedding. It's a couple of stories high, all of them filled with rooms to train whatever 'lucky' human has been accepted into this part of the afterlife and turn them into more warriors. Down below is a dark, chamber-like place that all but God herself is forbidden to go into. And in the heart of the floating world, situated comfortably above her sons and daughters, is Juno.

"Mother?" Beetlejuice asks in a meek voice. He stood beside the towering throne built from rays of the sun, bent and folded like a rainbow-threaded, handwoven chair. Juno slowly rolled her eyes over to her eldest son from beneath her glasses. Sweat beaded across his forehead when he made eye contact with his mother, his clammy hands interlocking as he cracked his knuckles anxiously. "Er... I-I'm sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to see if you had, uh, considered making me a g-guardian angel at all?"

Juno stared intently down at him, letting out a sigh and looking straight ahead again, snapping her fingers and pointing at the widely vacant space to her left.

Slightly startled by the invitation, Beetlejuice hesitated for a second, but quickly regained his composure and allowed his vulture-like wings to spread. Kicking off the ground, he flapped his way up onto the throne and landed on the over-sized arm of the chair, squatting down and timidly staring at his mother from a few feet away. She tapped her fingers rhythmically on the space to her right, and across from the two of them, displayed on the soft, white cloud wall, blurred images began to rapidly fly past as she searched through the various locations.

It took a minute before the projection landed on a singular location, a meek gutter situated under a bridge that was littered with puffy graffiti and empty beer bottles. In the midst of it, squatting in the shade, were five teenagers, all looking to be no older than sophomores. Slowly, the view focused in on one of the girls sitting under the bridge, looking rather zoned out as she breathed in the cigarette dangling on her bottom lip.

"Lydia Deetz," Juno says, flicking the cap off her silver flask and taking a swig.

"Deetz..." Beetlejuice murmurs under his breath. "I recognize that name..."

"You retrieved her mother, Emily Deetz, from the Netherworld last week," Juno grumbles, pursing her thin lips. "But that's beside the point; focus! And wipe off that sweat, you pig, don't stain my seat."

Beetlejuice doesn't give much of a reaction to the insult, he simply wipes his face with the back of his wrist and examines Lydia.

"Mother, I-I don't want to complain, but... A grieving, trouble-making teenager seems like a bit much for my first assignment, right?" He questions shyly.

Juno looks at him with a wide, wrinkled, forced grin. "Oh no! Weww, I wouwd nevew want to put you in a tuff position, sweety," She purrs in an unsettling baby voice. "If it's too hawd fow my wittle angew, I guess you'ww just have to stay up here with me."

Beetlejuice swallows thickly and tugs absently at his collar.

"No... No, she's perfect, I'm sorry for complaining," he says, defeat clear in his tone.

"Good. Now listen to me carefully, I don't want you fucking this up like you do everything else," Juno begins, shifting slightly and repositioning her large, pure white wings. "First, you need to keep the girl alive, but not by any means necessary. If an earthquake or tsunami or something occurs and it's clearly going to kill her, you can't pull off some little miracle and let her somehow survive.

"Secondly, you can not show yourself to her, because revealing yourself is confirmation of an afterlife and creates a big mess and a stack of paperwork I don't want to deal with. Lastly, you'll be able to hear where she is and what she's doing at all times and feel whatever physical pain she feels, so even you shouldn't find it too hard to keep an eye on her."

When the lecture was done, Beetlejuice just replied with a curt nod and stood up again, stretching his ruffled wings. Without any goodbyes, he walked off the chair and glided towards the wall, disappearing through the projection of Lydia Deetz and being spat out in the sky, flapping his wings to keep in the air and staring down at the group of teens from above.

Puffing out his chest and quietly ordering himself to be confident, he closed his wings and dove towards the ground, reopening them a foot above to allow for a smooth landing.

He spun on the heels of his feet, jaw slightly agape as he took in his surroundings. The wind, tussling his moss-green hair; the sun, warming his pale white skin; the ground, solid and hard underfoot. Everything was so different from the hell that was heaven, and this filthy gutter was enough to make a smile spread across his face.

Finally, Beetlejuice turned and looked at Lydia. He hesitated for a moment, his hands twitching at his sides, before slowly walking over to her. He stared at the girl from above and sighed deeply, turning around and sitting beside her.

"You make a good scapegoat, babes," he commented under his breath. "Do me a favor and stay this easy for the next 80 or so years, okay?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: This chapter contains themes of suicide. If you're sensitive to that, skip to the bottom for a summary of the chapter in the endnotes.

She did not.

Two days after being assigned to her, Beetlejuice helplessly followed Lydia and two of the friends she had been sitting under the bridge with, and watched her, with growing anxiety, break into some suburban families home.

She did it with two boys, one of which sat outside, hiding in the shadows and keeping a lookout for the family who lived there, while the other one broke the back window and helped Lydia flounder inside.

After several minutes of sifting through cabinets and drawers, pocketing whatever she deemed valuable, the boy who helped her in the window started frantically alerting her before running off. Lydia gasped and followed suit, crawling through the window and running after the dark silhouettes of her friends. From behind, only a few feet away, she could hear a car come to a stop in the driveway and a man clamber out and shout at the fleeing teens.

Beetlejuice floated alongside Lydia, glancing around nervously, squinting through the darkness and trying to keep an eye out for anything that could even hint at the possibility of danger. He fazed through a fence and watched Lydia attempt to jump it, only to get her foot caught in the wire and fall flat on her face. The boys, shouting meaningless apologies over their shoulders, continued to run from the scene and leave her behind.

After a trip to the police department and a few hours spent in the freezing holding cell, Charles got her. Beetlejuice had been expecting to hear an earful about it, but Lydia's father just muttered, "three charges of breaking and entering. Un-fucking-believable." The rest of the car ride was uncomfortably tense.

Third times the charm though, because Lydia was so furious with her friends for leaving her behind that she refused to go with them on any of their other little heists. Instead, Lydia spent a lot more time in her room with the curtains drawn and the lights off, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Beetlejuice's throat itched and his chest felt stuffy after just ten minutes of sitting in the compact, unventilated room, but he preferred this in comparison to being dragged around by some kid trying to get an adrenaline rush by kicking down doors and stealing TVs. He simply cracked open the window when Lydia wasn't paying attention and let the smoke slowly filter out.

Two weeks after visiting the county jail, Lydia still hadn't made any attempts to meet with her buddies. Either that or none of them had invited her out again. Beetlejuice couldn't be sure, all she did was text and he wasn't super comfortable reading her messages over her shoulder. Although, one thing he was sure about was that Lydia had become increasingly depressed the longer she stayed in her room. At one point he had tried to entice her out, slowly cracking open her bedroom door to get her attention. It took several minutes until she reacted to it, putting down the book she had been reading and making her way out of her room and down the hall. Originally, he had been glowing with the feeling of success, but the moment Lydia entered the living room her father began to sneer.

"Look who decided to come out of her room," Charles scoffed. "Did you get tired of hot-boxing in your room? Are you bored of peeling my wallpaper and staining my fucking ceiling? What, costing your hard-working dad hundreds just doesn't do it for you?"

Lydia chewed the inside of her cheeks, holding her hands behind her back and picking at her fingernails. "Just wanted to see what you were doing," she commented with an agitated sigh.

"Well I'm trying to watch the news, but it's hard to do that when I can smell my daughter one room over wasting her life and destroying my house," he chastised, picking up the remote and turning up the volume. "God, your mother would be so disappointed if she could see you right now."

Lydia inhaled sharply and Beetlejuice could feel the pressure on the inside of his cheeks grow. She didn't stand there long, quickly taking the silence as an opportunity to turn around and walk back into her room, shutting the door behind her. Beej stood in the hall for a second, casting a glare in Charles direction. In response, the lounge chair he was sitting in whipped backward and threw Chuck off of it. He quickly clambered to his feet and looked around in shock, which put a satisfied smirk on the angels face as he floated through the wall and back into Lydia's room.

What he expected to see was her sitting on her bed, continuing to read her novel or texting one of her friends. What he was met with was her hunched over her desk, the lamp on, washing a piece of paper with an orange glow as Lydia scribbled on it. Her face was unreadable, her eyes glassy and blank.

"...and now," she murmured, reading along with her writing. "I know that all I want is my mama. I want my home back. Mama, I'm on my way."

Beetlejuice floated behind her, peaking over her shoulder and reading along.

"Who're you writing to, kid? Heaven doesn't take fan mail, you know," Beetlejuice chuckled.

He backed up when Lydia stood and followed close behind as she made her way out of her bedroom, taking a left and walking down the hall, straight into the laundry room.

Beej sat on the dryer, following Lydia's movements as she set the letter on the washing machine before ducking down and rummaging through the storage closet. After a moment, she backed up, holding a stool in one hand and a rope in the other. It wasn't until she had thrown the rope up, catching it on a vacant hook screwed into the ceiling, and pulled it until a newly knotted noose was just above her head did Beetlejuice realize what was going on.

"Woah, Lyds," he exclaimed, jumping off the dryer and watching her with wide, panicked eyes. "C-Come on, kid, rethink this! You're young, you've got your whole life ahead of you, don't throw it away just because of your daddy! I mean, when you think about it, you probably won't ever find your mom, because people who kill themselves just become employees of the Netherworld. You don't want to work for the Netherworld, right?"

Of course, Beetlejuice was just talking to himself, seeing as he was nothing more than an occasional cold spot to Lydia. She stepped onto the stool and held the noose in her hands, framing her face with it.

"N-No, Lydia, seriously," Beetlejuice stammered, his face drenched with sweat as he swung his arms around at her, causing a shiver to shoot up her spine. "Everyone dies, right? E-Except you, you can't die. Lydia, c-come on girl, I need this, I-I can't go back there."

Warm tears were streaming down Lydia's face, her hands shaking hard as she stared at the rope. Her face had slackened, the guard she had put up beginning to fail as pain, sadness, and fear reflected clearly in her eyes. Beej stared at her, attempting to formulate a plan amid his panic.

To late.

In one swift motion, Lydia's head was through the loop and the stool had been kicked out from underneath her. The ceiling creaked with the sudden weight, Lydia's body dangling a few inches above the ground, her legs twitching and kicking out, trying to touch the ground. Her hands reached for her throat, her body subconsciously attempting to fight against the impending doom by scratching and tugging the noose.

In response, Beetlejuice collapsed onto his knees, his hands wrapped around his throat, his wings shooting open and flapping violently. He didn't need to breathe, per se, but the feeling of his lungs folding in on themselves was enough to make his legs buckle. He gasped hard, more out of instinct than for any proper reason, and watched with bloodshot eyes as Lydia flailed.

Don't panic, he told himself, scrapping his fingers against the cement ground. It takes about fifteen seconds for a girl her height and weight to pass out from lack of oxygen, and another four or five minutes to die from it. When she gets knocked out, I'll simply cut her down. 

The plan was much easier on paper. Laying on the floor, gasping for air, and watching the girl he was assigned to protect sobbing as she was slowly choked to death was proving to be a lot harder than he originally thought it would be. Not only that, but fifteen seconds of choking seemed to last a lot longer.

It happened though. Lydia's eyes rolled into the back of her head and her head dangled limply, her fingers and feet continuing to flinch and twitch awkwardly. 

Beetlejuice held his hand out in front of him and slashed at the air with his palm facing the sky. His hand began to glow, and bits of crystals rapidly formed above it. They clustered together and elongated, and in a second a sword had formed out of thin air and landed in the angels grasp.

He swung his arm and let go of the blade, sending it soaring through the air and slicing the rope in half. Lydia's limp body collapsed onto the floor, and her chest expanded greatly as her lungs desperately welcomed in the air it had been missing. Beetlejuice gasped, coughing dryly and clutching at his chest. He swallowed thickly and crawled towards Lydia, grabbing the rope from around her neck and loosening it. Looking over his shoulder, he glanced at the door and threw it open with a sweep of his hand, slamming it against the wall.

"LYDIA!" Charles shouted from the living room. "Don't you dare start slamming doors!"

Beetlejuice stared for a second and glanced at the door, slamming it three times in a row. He heard the chair from the living room creak as Charles stood up.

"Dammit, Lydia!" He barked, stomping down the hall. "I know you heard me, I said-"

He paused in both his sentence and walk, staring straight down the hall and through Beej, directly at Lydia's body.

"Oh my god, Lydia!" He shouted, running forward and dropping to his knees in front of her. He picked up Lydia's head, resting it on his leg and looking down at her with panicked eyes, before reaching for his pocket and pulling out his phone.

"Hello, 911?" He spoke quickly. "I need an ambulance, my daughter tried to hang herself."

Beetlejuice sighed deeply and scooted backward, sitting against the wall and resting his head against it. He shut his eyes tightly and tried to calm his pounding heart.

"Ugh," Beetlejuice huffed. "Mothers going to kill me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After getting caught breaking and entering, Lydia is arrested and bailed out by Charles. She stops hanging out with her friends who had abandoned her at the house. Beetlejuice tries to silently urge her to go outside and hang out with her father, who immediately chastises and belittles her. In response, she writes a suicide note, attempts to kill herself, and is cut down by Beetlejuice after she passes out. The chapter ends with Charles calling the police.


	3. Chapter 3

The ambulance arrived in less than ten minutes. It swept up Lydia in a gurney, dragged Charles into the back of the truck, and sped the two off to the closest hospital. Beetlejuice, on the other hand, didn't stick around long enough to bear witness to the scene, as he was called back to Heaven moments after cutting Lydia down.

The Cellar was vastly different from the rest of Heaven. It was built from gray, electrically charged clouds rather than the usual soft, pure white ones. It resembled a torture chamber from a medieval movie more than anything else. Rows of chains hung across the walls, a row of iron beds on the left, a cluster of dark oak tables holding tools on the right, and hooks covering most of the ceiling.

Everything was stained gold.

"My dear Lawrence," Juno sighed, sitting on one of the tables, legs crossed tightly. She was spinning one of the blades in her hands, examining it through her spectacles with dark eyes. They knife glowed brightly, and when she set it back down on the table, the shine left as well. "Two weeks. You had three rules, and you broke one in only two weeks. You must understand how embarrassing that is, yes?"

Beetlejuice was on his knees in front of his mother, his head bowed in shame and his hands gripping tightly onto the cloud ground.

"Mother, please forgive me," Beetlejuice pleaded quietly, his body trembling from head to toe. "I-I know I went against your will, but I c-couldn't just watch her die."

"Oh shut up, you can't pull that shit with me," Juno snarled, hopping off of the table and staring down at her son. "You're weak, Lawrence. You're pathetic and weak. You can't take a bit of pain so you defied your own mother to avoid it. It's disgusting."

"You assigned me to protect that girl, I-I did what I thought was necessary. I thought-"

"You did nothing but try and save your own ass, don't try-"

"No, I w-wouldn't dare, I-"

"Do NOT interrupt me!" Juno spat, raising her hand as if to strike Beetlejuice, but he let out a choked whimper and managed to cower even closer to the ground. She stared down at him for several seconds before grunting and lowering her hand. "You're lucky I'm so kind, Lawrence. I'm going to let you keep your job as Deetz's babysitter."

"O-Oh, mother t-thank you s-so m-much," Beetlejuice choked out, stuttering through every shaking breath.

Juno smirked and squatted down, grabbing Beetlejuice's face in her wrinkled hand, gripping him tightly, her nails digging into his bearded cheeks. "Of course, darling. But you know you're going to have to be disciplined for what you've done, right?"

Beej swallowed hard and murmured 'yes'.

"Good. Then let's begin." Juno smiled as she stood, lifting up Beetlejuice, who was taller by ten inches, with one hand. He dangled limply as she floated him out of her grasp, leaving him just below the ceiling. Turning her darkened eyes to her left, she spotted a thin metal wire that snaked its way towards her, wriggling through the air and coiling itself around Beetlejuice's throat. He bit his lip tightly as it wrapped around one of the hooks, knotting itself securely.

Beetlejuice suddenly fell and tension dramatically increased on the wire as Juno released her hold on the both of them. He was hanging a few inches off of the floor, his throat nearly wrapped shut. 

Juno, stoic as ever, levitated a foot off the ground and gently touched the wire with her index finger. Instantly, it took on a golden hue like the knife she was holding previously, and only then did Beetlejuice let out a shrill cry of pain, his shaking hands reaching up and clawing desperately at the metal carving into his skin. Juno watched for a second, staring into her sons bulging eyes, before touching the ground again.

"I'll let you down when Deetz is released from the hospital," she said apathetically, checking the watch on her wrist. "Until then, I'm going back upstairs. See you in a week, son," Juno added, a sadistic smirk crossing her face as she sauntered out of The Cellar, not sparing a passing glance to Beej on her way out.

___

"You are very lucky, Miss Deetz," Doctor Walter said, looking down at the clipboard in his hands, lifting up the page and examining the text beneath. Lydia had stirred awake in the ambulance on the way back to the hospital, and since then she had been carried to her current bed and was under constant surveillance and plenty of check-ups. "You obtained no brain damage despite the lack of oxygen, and your windpipe is a little bruised, but it's nothing serious."

"So when can I take her home?" Charles asked, sitting in an armchair beside Lydia, a magazine resting wide open in his lap.

"Well, we're going to want to keep her here overnight just to be positive that everything's okay," the doctor said, pushing up his glasses. "And afterward she's going to have to go to a psychiatric hospital and be put under suicide watch for five days minimum."

"Suicide watch?"

"Yes. And in less than an hour, the police will show up to question Miss Deetz."

"Question? About what?"

"It's all very routine, I assure you. They're just going to ask some simple questions, look through her phone, just see if this was an actual suicide attempt and if so, why did she do it."

Charles pursed his lips, tapping his leg quickly and aggressively in annoyance. "Am I going to have to stick around the entire time?" He growled, crossing his arms tightly.

"Dad..." Lydia murmured.

"Hush, adults are talking," Charles said without looking at her. The doctor glanced between the two and cleared his throat, looking back down at the clipboard again.

"No, you just need to fill out her paperwork," Doctor Walter said, tucking the board under his arm. "You can fill it out now if you wish. Right, this way," He added, gesturing out the door. Charles grunted and nodded, pushing himself onto his feet and walking out, following after his daughter's doctor.

Lydia stared out the door for several minutes before looking to the tv. She zoned out, her eyes crossing and blurring the world around her as she stared vacantly at the newscaster. Absently, her hand rubbed her bruised neck, feeling the swollen area gingerly. She failed. She couldn't believe she had failed something so simple. She was certain the rope was sturdy, how the hell did it break?

No, not break, she thought, shutting her eyes and shaking her head. Her father had brought the rope onto the ambulance per-request so the police could look at it at the hospital. She had caught a glance of it while laying on the gurney. The slice was too even to be a simple tear. It got cut... That was probably just dad finding me.

Still, something told her that wasn't right. That Charles wasn't her hidden savior. She wasn't sure what, but she just knew that something or someone else had been in the room with her.

"Don't be stupid, Lydia," she told herself. "That's impossible."

Isn't it?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for my absence, I've been busy with school.

Four days.  
Four days of Beetlejuice hanging, four days of Lydia wandering around the psychiatric hospital, and four days of Charles being left at home by himself. It was just a bad time all around, frankly. But it was finally over. The hospital had discharged Lydia and she only had to wait about ten minutes before Charles arrived and checked her out.  
Likewise, Juno sauntered into the Cellar several minutes late, and took her sweet time to unravel the wire that was tightly threaded around her son's throat. Finally, it came loose, and Beetlejuice collapsed to the floor, gasping and hacking painfully.  
“Don’t be a baby, Lawrence,” Juno said, rolling her eyes. “Get up. Lydia is on her way home and I want you to reconnect with her there. And change your hair color,” she added with a glare. “You look stupid with purple.”  
Beetlejuice nodded in the midst of his coughing. He pressed his hand against his throat, feeling the deep wound that had carved its way into his flesh, and looked down at the liquid gold that stained his pale skin. Inhaling sharply, he wiped the blood off on his shirt and pushed himself slowly onto his feet, staggering slightly as his knees threatened to give way.  
Juno watched with steel eyes; her arms folded tightly over her chest, sympathy void in her expression. A painful, tense silence carried on as God watched her angel half-stumble, half-limp out of the Cellar and up the dark stairs, and Beej held his breath until he couldn’t feel her eyes piercing into him anymore.  
“Ugh,” he hacked, his voice raspier than usual from the abuse his throat had taken. “Can’t believe I let myself get so soft. And over a breather. I deserved to be disciplined after that.” Bj grumbled.  
Massaging his neck, he paused at the entrance of heaven, wrapping his hands around his throat. When he moved them several seconds later, his neck was completely healed, and all that was left to hint at the previous damage was the gold staining his palms.  
Beetlejuice inhaled deeply and put his hands together. “Okay,” he murmured, stretching open his wings. “Alright. That was the first and last time I’m breaking the rules for that kid. I’m not fu- screwing this up just for some stupid emo girl. If she wants to fool around and try to kill herself, then I’ll just let her. What’s it matter to me whether she lives or dies?”  
He bit his lip and sighed, but chose not to think any more on the matter. Stepping forward, the angel kicked off the ground and dived ahead, soaring through the doorway and through the clouds below.   
The blue sky spat him out just above Lydia’s house, and as he made his descent back to the ground, he watched as a slick black Mercedes-Benz rolled into the driveway. The rumbling ignition cut, Charles got out of the car first, staring at the house with a look of determination as his daughter pushed her way out of the passenger seat. Beetlejuice sighed at the sight of her, admittedly happy to see she was okay. Tired, miserable, and still quite suicidal, but okay nonetheless.  
Lydia turns to look at her father over her shoulder, attempting to catch his eye. When her attempts fail, she huffs and turns away, her eyes falling on a previously unseen addition.  
“Dad?” She says, shutting the car door behind her. “Whose car is that?”  
“Let’s go inside,” Charles replies dismissively.  
Deciding not to argue, she nods and makes her way down the sidewalk, Beetlejuice joining her side as she passes him. He was staring down at her, attempting to get a look at her neck that was hidden by a scarf he had never seen her wear. He grabbed the seam and tugged it lightly, trying to loosen it at the very least, but she had fastened the fabric tightly around her throat.  
“Come on, kid, at least let me gauge the damage,” he grumbled, brow furrowed.  
Oblivious to his pleads, Lydia kept walking, stopping on the porch and waiting for Charles to unlock the door. To her surprise, the door handle jiggled before creaking open, revealing a strange woman she had never seen before.  
Throwing open the door and stretching her arms out, the woman beamed. “Lydia! So good to finally meet you!” she drawled, her tone bright and optimistic, seemingly expecting a hug from the young girl.  
“Um...” Lydia hesitated.  
“Lydia, this is Delia,” Charles introduced, his usually solemn face twitching into a half-smile as he approached the two. “I’ve hired her to be your... What were you again?”  
“A life coach!” Delia hummed, putting her arms down when she finally accepted she was being left hanging.  
“Yeah. That.” he cleared his throat and crossed his arms, standing next to Delia and looking down at his daughter.  
“What does a life coach do?” Lydia asked slowly.  
“We help guide confused people and make you better people,” Delia said with a grin.  
“Sounds like a scam,” Beetlejuice and Lydia both stated, eyeing the two adults suspiciously.  
Delia seemed a bit taken aback from the claim, scoffing and smiling and staring, completely at a loss for words. “Excuse me?” She finally managed.  
“Don’t listen to her, she’s just being pessimistic,” Charles growled, stepping in between the two and turning his back on Lydia, staring at Delia. “Go inside and wait in Lydia’s room. I need a moment to talk to her about the plan.”  
Hesitating for a second, she finally nodded, gave a thumbs up, and retreated back into the house.  
“What plan?” Lydia asked, staring up at her dad who hadn’t turned back around yet. “Dad? What plan?”  
Charles took a deep breath, tensed his shoulders, and turned, looking at Lydia for the first time today. “We’re moving.” He stated.  
“W-What?” Lydia gasped, the two words alone practically moving her to tears. Beetlejuice, who had been standing beside her and watching silently, let his jaw drop in astonishment. “We can’t move! This is our house; this is mom’s house. Mom loved this house!”  
“It’s not up for discussion, Lydia. I’ve made up my mind. I have a trip planned to go look at a few houses in Connecticut. If everything works out, we’ll be moved out before Thanksgiving.”  
“Woah, Chuck, maybe you should reconsider,” Beetlejuice pitched in, waving his hands in front of Charles’s face to try and get his attention. “Moving, also known as one of the most stressful events a breather can go through? Probably not the best thing to do right after a suicide attempt.”  
“Now go to your room,” Charles continued, oblivious to Beetlejuice who was trying to smack him and was groaning in annoyance each time his hands fazed through. “Delia is going to be sticking around for a while, so if you decide to be stubborn and not open up now, you’ll have to eventually.”  
Lydia, breathing heavily and tripping over her own words as she argued, face turning bright pink as she held back tears, gave up trying to fight with an agitated groan. Stomping past him, she marched into her room and slammed the door behind her, only to turn around and see Delia, startled and alert, sitting on her bed.  
Lydia and Beetlejuice both sighed.  
“Hey... Maybe she won’t be that bad,” Beetlejuice reasoned, shrugging optimistically. “Why not just give her a shot. What’s the worse that’ll happen?”  
Delia looked over and grabbed her baguette purse, digging inside and pulling out a purple rock.  
“Here, take this amethyst and hold it tight in your hand! It’ll calm you down, and if you hold it long enough, cure your anxiety!” Delia smiled, holding the gem out in her outstretched hand.  
“Oh. Okay, I was wrong,” Beetlejuice said, scratching the back of his head as Lydia slowly took the crystal and stared at it distastefully. “Yeah, sorry kid. You’re screwed.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Apologies for the unannounced hiatus. This chapter was meant to be longer but I wanted to get something out this weekend.   
Enjoy :)

Charles went on his trip to Connecticut alone, leaving Lydia to be babysat by Delia and, much more attentively, Beetlejuice. Charles had given a speech before leaving about how there were a lot of houses to look at, how he probably wouldn’t be home for at least a week, etcetera.  
Two days later he was pulling into the driveway and calling the girls into the living room. Apparently, he had found a lovely two-story house with a darling antique décor that was put on the market six months ago. The previous owners were forced to give it up after falling through the floor and plummeting to their death.  
Charming.  
Charles was sold on it though. So much so that he had bought it right after the tour and had already called the moving company, giving them two days to pack and clean the entire house. To speed the process along, Charles assigned Lydia and Delia to work together to pack Lydia’s bedroom and the kitchen, while Charles took ownership over his room and the living room.  
Beetlejuice, and he could only assume Lydia as well, had noticed that Chuck was rather interested in keeping Delia very close to his daughter. Of course, it made sense at the beginning. It seemed normal to stick the therapist —well, the ‘life coach’— with the patient. But the conversations that always found their way back to Lyd’s dad, the constant checking in from Charles to see how they were getting along, and the not-so-subtle dreamy talk about Delia sticking around for a long time was hinting at something… more.   
Clearly though, Lydia didn’t want to ask. She didn’t seem to want to talk much at all, considering that all through the two days of packing and the three hour flight, she said about three words. No, it wasn’t until the moving trucks carted the little family up to their new home did Lydia open up, apparently with a grocery list of complaints with her.  
“This place smells like mildew and shit,” she grunted, laying back on the loveseat as the two movers hulled her to the center of the room.  
“Ah ah ah!” Delia chastised, dropping the box she was holding and jogging over to the couch, placing her hands on the back of it and leering over Lydia. “What did we discuss, Lydia? As my guru Otho always says, ‘A bad attitude is like a flat tire. You can’t go anywhere until you change it.”  
“Shut up, Delia,” Lydia said.  
“That is enough!” Charles barked, passing what he was holding over to the movers. “Lydia, I am not going to tell you again, you do not speak to Delia that way. You know what, why don’t you just go to your room. Your stuff is already in there, start unpacking now. I have to get ready for a dinner party with Maxie Dean so I don’t need you getting in my way.”  
“Whatever,” Lydia mumbled. Pushing herself off of the couch, she huffed and stomped her way across the room and up the stairs. Beetlejuice, who had balanced himself rather comfortably on the open front door, stared at Delia and Charles for a moment. They were standing close, speaking in hushed tones, fingers brushing against each other. Bj grimaced.   
This won’t go well.   
The tether binding him to Lydia didn’t allow him to reflect on it much longer. As the invisible leash tightened around his neck, he floated off the door and glided through the ceiling, relying on feeling alone to find his way back to Lydia. Down the pale green halls and through the egg white colored door, he hovered into the room and paused abruptly at the sight.  
The skeleton of a bed on the right, a barren bookshelf on the left, and the unsightly decorations of cardboard boxes lining the walls were all just a frame for the girl in the center. Lydia, sitting criss-crossed, arms wrapped tightly around herself, was staring at the ceiling with an absent expression. Her lips were moving, but the words were hardly more than a whisper. Blinking, Beetlejuice approached, seating himself across from her.  
“Hey mom,” she said. “I need your help. I-I don’t know what’s going on, things are changing so fast. You left, then dad was only ever at work, I lost control of my grades, some strange pseudo-therapist moved in…”   
Lydia trailed off, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the fabric of her clothes in the balls of her fist. Beetlejuice couldn’t help but notice just how much she was shaking.   
“Why… Why haven’t you done anything?” Lydia croaked. “I know you’re here. I can feel you here. You can see how hard this is right? You can see how fucking difficult it is to put your daughter through this? I-I just need a sign. Like a plague of mice, or a lightening strike, or-or even dropping a nuclear bomb. Please, if you care at all, do something.”  
She turned her head up to the sky, eyes hopeful and glossy, and Beetlejuice couldn’t help but look with her. Of course, she wasn’t going to get anything. And she must have known that, because seconds later she had stood and walked directly through him.   
Climbing to his feet, Beej turns and watches Lydia rip off the tape on one of her boxes and rummage through the contents. As she pulls out the items that were previously decorating her shelf, Beetlejuice watching through bored, hooded eyes, a shiver shoots down his spine that jolts him upright. If that weren’t enough to put him on edge, the goosebumps freckling his skin and the hair sticking up on his neck cause his shoulders to rise and tense.   
Seconds later, a howl echos down the hall and reverberates through the bedroom. The strange noise stops Lydia in her tracks as she glances up from unpacking, holding a plastic Halloween decoration loosely as she stares at the door. The howling was sounding more like cartoonish ghost noises the closer it got. When two people stepped into the doorway, both draped in white sheets with eyeholes cut out, the noise made a lot more sense.   
“Ugh,” Lydia sneered, looking back at the box through her eyelashes. “What are you doing? Is this another one of Delias ‘exercises’? Look, I’m unboxing, so go back to doing your shit and just leave me alone.”  
The two stopped making the noise, hesitating as they glanced at each other.   
“No, w-“ a mans voice began.   
Beetlejuice, who’s wings immediately shot out as his feathers and hair both turned a vibrant yellow, lunged forward and grabbed the two by the collar, barely managing to relax his wings enough to flap them and send the three shooting through the ceiling and up onto the roof.   
“W-WOAH! What the f-“ a woman’s voice began.   
Interrupting her, Beetlejuice grabbed the sheets shrouding the two strangers and ripped them off, revealing the woman and man. Beej recognized them immediately. Before the move, he had called upstairs to ask about the two who had died, just to make sure that everything was safe and their souls had been collected.   
They hadn’t.   
“Barbara, Adam-“ he began.   
“How do you know our names?” Adam asked, pulling Barbara close to him.   
“Why are you still here? An angel or demon came to collect your souls, yes?” Bj ignored him.  
“Well, yes, but answer-“  
“So why would you not fu-“ Beetlejuice flashed a bright red as he raised his voice, but he cut himself off quickly, taking a deep breath and combing his fingers through his hair, brushing the red out. “Why… Why would you not go with them?”  
Adam and Barbara clutched each other a little tighter at the outburst, glancing at each other and swallowing thickly.  
“This is our home. We weren’t just going to abandon it,” Barbara answered bravely.  
“It— See, that’s the funny thing. It’s actually not your house,” Beej chuckled dryly. “No, when you die, you don’t get to just… Keep the house. You’re supposed to go with who comes to collect you and move on.”   
“Well, if we had to do that, then we wouldn’t have had the option to stay put,” Adam muttered.   
“Adam I’m going to- Oh my mom, okay,” Beetlejuice bit his lip and ruffled his red hair once again, but it was refusing to fade to green this time. “Okay. Okay, let’s compromise. How about… you leave the Deetz family alone, give the house to them, and just spend the next 100 years out of the way until you get the option to go to heaven again. In return, I won’t seal you away in the attic. How’s that sound?”  
“…Incredibly unfair,” Barbra said.   
“A little, yeah,” Beetlejuice shrugged. “So deal?”  
He held out his hand, smiling at the two ghost as they glared at his outstretched palm.   
“Okay, I’m trying to be nice about this and give you the illusion of a choice, but I have to get back to Lydia, so shake my hand or I’ll just store you in the attic and forget about it,” Bj said through a long, forced grin.   
The couple hesitated a moment longer, but ultimately Adam leaned forward and took the angels hand. They bounced their joined hands once, sending out a spark of light that caused Beej to grin.   
“Thank you,” he sighed.   
Relieved, Beetlejuice closed his wings and folded his hands together, sinking through the floor as if it were water and dropping out beside Lydia.


End file.
